What Is Akash? Cloud Leasing, ACT Payments, and AKT Value

Market Trends

11 October 2026

Akash is a decentralized cloud computing marketplace. Its core idea is to lease out idle GPUs and server capacity around the world through market bidding. ACT is the "compute credit" used for pricing, while AKT is the token responsible for staking, governance, and value accrual in the network. Understanding how these three relate is the foundation for evaluating AKT's value.

OKX Exchange
A leading global cryptocurrency platform,suitable for both beginners and experienced traders.
New user benefit: 20% off trading fees upon registration!！

Cloud Leasing: A Bidding Market, Not Just "Renting Servers"

Akash works in a fundamentally different way from traditional cloud platforms. You submit a deployment request using a YAML file that specifies how much CPU, memory, storage, and GPU you need. Providers around the world then bid on it, and you pick one from the offers to sign a lease. The entire process is recorded on-chain, settled by block, and can be terminated at any time.

Cost advantage is its most direct selling point. Akash officially claims it can be up to 85% cheaper than AWS and Google Cloud. Third-party comparison articles also mention that auction results often fall below 80% to 90% of AWS list prices. For organizations spending more than $50,000 per month on GPUs, this difference is economically meaningful.

The network currently supports deploying containerized applications, databases, AI training, and inference tasks. On the provider side, there are 62 active nodes offering 15k vCPUs, 423 GPUs, and 732 TB of storage. In terms of product form, it is better suited for DevOps teams already comfortable with Docker and infrastructure-as-code, rather than ordinary users who want to deploy with a few clicks.

ACT Payments: Using "Compute Credits" to Isolate Price Volatility

ACT is a payment tool introduced by Akash in March 2026 through the BME upgrade. It is pegged to approximately $1, is non-transferable, and can only be used to pay for compute resources.

The reason for introducing ACT is the conflict between AKT price volatility and cloud computing pricing needs. Akash's official blog puts the problem bluntly: if users pay in USDC, AKT becomes irrelevant; if users are forced to pay in AKT, enterprises are unwilling—nobody wants to deploy a 30-day AI training job while bearing the risk of compute costs fluctuating by 20% due to token liquidation.

The ACT mechanism works like this: users burn AKT to mint ACT, then use ACT to pay for compute. After providers complete the work, the protocol burns ACT and mints new AKT to pay the provider. This process ties together the goals of "pricing in stable dollars" and "AKT must have demand."

AKT Value: The BME Model Links Usage to Token Scarcity

BME is the economic model that Akash launched on mainnet on March 23, 2026, and it represents the core change in AKT's value logic.

The problem with the old model: Before BME, there was no direct relationship between network usage growth and AKT value. Users could pay in USDC, and AKT demand came only from staking and governance, not from actual compute consumption.

The BME design: Now every compute payment triggers AKT burning. When users mint ACT, they burn AKT. When providers settle, new AKT is minted based on the price at that time. If AKT rises in price between the user's deposit and the provider's settlement, the dollar value in the treasury exceeds what needs to be paid out, and the difference becomes net burn. Akash officially describes this mechanism as "making every workload a deflationary event."

Initial data after launch: BME was activated on March 23, and by March 31, Messari tracked 53,520 AKT burned. Cumulative compute spending also surpassed $5 million during this period.

Risks: The "Quality" of Usage Deserves More Attention Than the "Quantity"

Messari's Q1 2026 report disclosed a set of data that needs to be taken seriously: average GPU usage fell 57.4% quarter-over-quarter, average GPU availability fell 57.5%, and GPU utilization remained around 33.7%. Average CPU utilization rose from 17.7% to 26.1%, but this was caused by "supply falling faster than demand," not by stronger demand.

A more noteworthy signal is "lease count increasing while revenue declines." Messari points out that this may mean tenants are choosing cheaper instances or deploying smaller workloads. Lease count alone does not tell the full story. The revenue quality and duration of individual leases are the metrics for judging real network demand.

Risks also exist on the node side. The number of active providers is declining, and GPU availability is shrinking. This may indicate that some providers chose to exit after calculating returns, or moved their hardware to other markets with higher bids.

The competitive landscape is not easy either. Render focuses on GPU rendering and batch inference, with more mature creator tools and a clearer verification model. io.net is also competing for GPU resources. Akash's positioning is a "general-purpose containerized cloud." Its advantage is flexibility, but the cost is having to face competitors like AWS directly rather than building a moat in a niche market.

Akash's BME model structurally ties AKT's value to network usage, and the design direction is clear. But Q1 2026 data shows that the "quality" of usage has not yet kept pace with the growth in "quantity." Those tracking AKT should focus not on lease count, but on average revenue per lease, GPU utilization trends, and whether BME burn volume grows steadily with usage. These metrics explain better than price fluctuations whether the network is moving from "being used" to "being worth paying for consistently."

OKX Exchange
A leading global cryptocurrency platform,suitable for both beginners and experienced traders.
New user benefit: 20% off trading fees upon registration!！